Category Archives: Events

Weekend Reading: What You Should Be Reading this Weekend

Credit: HubSpotNews that should be taking up space on your online reader, Kindle, iPad, or other miscellaneous gadgetry.

Data, Data, Data
Public Health: How Does the UK Compare with Europe? Interactive Map
Source: The Guardian
The Guardian‘s Data Blog produces interactive maps and images to visualize interesting data sets. This week they tackled life expectancies and overall health in the UK relative to Europe.

Gadgets
A Gestural Interface for Smart Watches
Source: MIT Technology Review
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Davis are developing a tiny chip that detects gestures in 3D. The chip is called Chirp, and its goal is to bring gesture controls to an array of devices, including wearable technology such as smart watches.

Startups
Circle Raises $9 Million Series A from Accel and General Catalyst to Make Bitcoins Mainstream
Source: TechCrunch 
Will Bitcoins make it after all? Circle, a Boston-based company, is a platform designed to make trading Bitcoin and other digital currencies easier. This is among the highest Series A funding received by startups in the digital currency space so far. See who invested and what this means for the company.

Events
One Million Kids Have Signed Up for the Hour of Code. Let the Geeking Out Commence.
Source: PandoDaily
Mark your calendars for December 9th – 15th, as the week of Computer Science Education begins. During that time, Continue reading Weekend Reading: What You Should Be Reading this Weekend

Boston Tech Events: Idea Week, Breakfast with VCs, and You

Boston Seaport
Credit: Elise Kovi’s Flickr

Another Monday, another work week. Unlike every other Monday, however, today ushers in the month of October and with it Boston’s Idea Week. Reawaken your inspiration, and herald in the new month with this entrepreneurial-centered event, taking place in the Seaport’s Innovation District. Plus, check out a handful of other tech-related events geared toward entrepreneurs, start-ups, and the generally curious. So get out-and-about the city, meet your next VC or co-founder, explore new ideas, welcome the change in season, and add these Boston events to your calendar.

Boston’s Idea Week

When: Oct 1-10

Where: Innovation District – at the Seaport

Details: Each day a new activity. Aimed at furthering the growth of Boston’s Innovation District, this week-long event is working “to bring together Boston’s change-makers, leaders, creative thinkers, entrepreneurs and world-class college students to share and celebrate innovative ideas, products, networks and businesses that are being tested and formed in Boston.”

http://www.bostonideaweek.org/

Twitter: #IdeaWk13 @BosIdeaWk

Boston Tech Breakfast Meetup

When: Oct 1

Where: Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center

Details: Who doesn’t love breakfast? Made for techies, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs, this meetup is true to its namesake. Over a bagel and coffee, share in the monthly show-and-tell format of presentations by local start-ups. Contact them for the opportunity to showcase your company.

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-TechBreakfast/events/128096822/

Hacks Hackers Boston Meetup

When: Oct 16

Where: The Boston Globe – 135 Morrissey Blvd., Dorchester, MA

Details: Three Nieman fellows will “discuss the growth and impact of digital and social media in Latin America, India, China—how users are employing technology to report and comment on the news, organize and motivate civic groups, and circumvent government controls.”

Speakers: Leslie Hook, Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times; Hasit Shah, senior broadcast journalist at BBC News in London; Daniel Eilemberg, founder and editor-in-chief of Animal Político

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/hackshackersboston/events/140537532/

Continue reading Boston Tech Events: Idea Week, Breakfast with VCs, and You

Fall Career Fairs: Have You Got What it Takes?

SoftArtisans TeamComing to a college near you.  We’re seeking inventive college students with object-oriented programming under their belts, a penchant for amassing new skills and those who don’t mind a few BBQs.  Think you’ve got the coding chops to work in this dynamic office? Then we want to meet you. If your school is not listed below, drop us a note, and tell us why you dream in C#.  Links to projects, coding samples, and other ways to showcase your craft are the best way to catch our eye (wink, wink).

Internships | Co-ops | Full-time.  We’re big on hands-on learning and career development. In years past we’ve had interns work on product demos, pick up a new programming language, and share their expertise on our blog. Your work will have a direct impact on the company and product. Interested? Stop by our booth to chat with one of our engineers!

Who we are:  A close-knit, dynamic, and agile team.  We work hard: Crafting artful code while solving challenging problems. We play hard: Office foosball, board games, cookouts, and company retreats. We’re encouraged to develop our skill sets by attending conferences and classes.

What we do: We aim to make business people more productive through all of our products. As a leading developer of Microsoft Office reporting software, we build scalable enterprise solutions.  Our products are OfficeWriter (an API for reading and writing Microsoft Office documents) and FileUp (a secure and easy-to-use File Transfer API).

Find out more about internship and career opportunities at SoftArtisans and how to join the SA Crew (and get in on those BBQs) by interacting with us on all of the usual social media hotspots or visiting one of the career fairs below.  Looking forward to seeing you then!

FALL CAREER FAIRS

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

12:30 – 4:30 pm

Rochester Institute of Technology

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

11 am – 4 pm

@RITCareerFairs

RPI

Friday, September 27, 2013

10 am – 3:30 pm Continue reading Fall Career Fairs: Have You Got What it Takes?

Webinar: Data Visualization and NodeXL and Marc Smith

nodeXLgraphAnalyzing and presenting your data is a daunting task. OfficeWriter makes it easier. Next week, we’re making it easier still with a new webinar on data visualization. Joining us is special guest Marc Smith, creator of NodeXL.

Marc Smith is the Chief Social Scientist at Connected Action Consulting group. Prior to that he worked at Microsoft Research, where he created NodeXL, an Excel add-in, which allows you to import and visualize your social network data, anything from email to Twitter to Flickr and beyond.

In this webinar you will learn:

  • The origins of NodeXL and what it could mean for businesses in regards to social networks
  • How to find the connections and patterns within your social network communities
  • How to use NodeXL to graph the connections between trending Twitter conversations

Q&A with Marc Smith

Leave with new ideas on graphically representing your data, and see how social can impact your business.

When: September 11, 2013 at 1 P.M. EST/10 A.M. PST

*Register early as seating is limited. Can’t attend? Register anyway and we’ll send a copy of the slides and recording following the webinar. Just be sure to write “Request for slides” in the notes section, so we have an accurate head count. Thank you!





#Inbound13: Seek Out the Things That Might Not Work

#Inbound13
Be Remarkable
Seek Out the Things That Might Not WorkOne Republic

The sweeping theme of this year’s Inbound conference by HubSpot, a conference dedicated to marketing professionals, was “Be Remarkable.” A show-stopping lineup of speakers and classes covered how to better manage and be remarkable within your inbound marketing. Last year, I felt there was a heavy emphasis on goal-setting in relation to your marketing efforts, whereas this year the emphasis seemed to lie heavily on context – the idea of knowing where your buyers are in the marketing funnel and then creating personalized content accordingly. This ties back to HubSpot’s core emphasis on customer-centricity and keeping the customer and their needs at the center of all of your marketing efforts. Delight and surprise. Using that school of thought, you will create relationships with your audience/customers, who ideally will become advocates for your brand and product because you provided them with something of value.

The one downside of the conference was the long lines to attend the classes the first day. However, in true HubSpot fashion, they listened to the attendees gripes and opened up more conference space along with repeating some of the popular classes. HubSpot’s main focus is on education – educating and empowering the customer. With a ton of classes and three days worth of learning, it’s easy to get lost in the swamp of information, which is why I did the heavy lifting for you. To better manage the onslaught of information and help myself put it into context (See what I did there? Heavy sigh. I know, bear with me. No more cheesy references. I promise.), I like to look for patterns and group items into categories. These were the large umbrellas I found the talks and classes fell under, along with the big ideas to take with you from the conference.

Inbound13: Nate Silver

Overarching Themes of the Conference:

Context:

Content is a staple to your marketing, bar none. However, context is not to be overlooked. It is the framework upon which you build your content. Context allows you to take into consideration the buyer’s experience at every stage in the buyer’s decision model. Use context to be a resource. Just as HubSpot is a resource for marketers and marketing strategies, so too should you be for your customers. You need to keep your customer at the center of your marketing. “Engaging with context” is key to building those customer relationships. In other words, you need to take into account where that person is in the buying cycle, how they have interacted with your site, if they want to talk to you right now or if they are just researching. You need to take into account who they are, what their needs are, what content they’re interested in, what information they’re seeking, and how they want to be interacted with. You can’t treat every person the same, because everyone is different, with differing needs.

Customer-centricity:

This falls within the realm of providing context to your content marketing. Put your customers at the center of your marketing efforts. Solve for the Customer (SFTC) was a phrase which popped up over the course of the three-day conference. In other words solve for the customer versus solving for the transaction. In the algebraic sense, solving for “X” puts “X” at the focus of the equation. That is what you are basing all of your moves around, all of your content around. Instead of approaching the marketing/sales process as a transaction, as a means-to-an-end, approach it with the customer at the center.

Work/Life Balance:

We are multitaskers. We are constantly innovating. With so many news sources and fragmentation of media/products, we’re challenged to be on the forefront of these trends. With the abundance of information and ease of access, there is a fear you will miss out on the latest-and-greatest. Arianna Huffington, Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post, as well as several Bold Talk speakers addressed this FOMO (Fear of Missing Out, for all those out of their teenage years). Connection is at the core of what we do. However, Arianna Huffington said we are in a constant state of motion, running ourselves ragged in an attempt to keep up. Huffington along with several Bold Talk speakers emphasized the need to disconnect and reconnect with your wellbeing so that you can grow and use your leadership skills to your full potential. By first taking care of yourself, you are better able to lead and care for others.Inbound13: Arianna Huffington

Failure is Inevitable:

Failure is part of the process. Best selling author and renowned speaker, Seth Godin, addressed this in his keynote. He said, “If you’re not willing to fail, you’re not willing to succeed.” Leaders/CEOs need to foster an environment where failure is accepted as part of the road to success. Everything is built upon everything else, just like Jenga, as another conference speaker pointed out. You learn from your mistakes. Godin gave the example of a company that sunk $2 million into an unsuccessful marketing project. The CEO’s response? I just spent $2 million dollars learning what didn’t work. Now let’s learn from it and find what does. This way of thinking about a project was exactly something our CEO told me. Now, don’t get me wrong. This does not mean Continue reading #Inbound13: Seek Out the Things That Might Not Work

New Webinar! Make Reports that Measure Up

Take a look at how OfficeWriter can turn your drab Excel reports into chart-topping spreadsheets. This month, it’s all about music as we cover your favorite bands, artists, and labels.

In this webinar we’ll cover:

  • Grouping and nesting in Excel
  • Using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
  • Charting in Excel and relationships between genre, artists, labels, and album price

When: Friday, August 23, 2013 at 1 P.M. EST

*Register early as space is limited.

Can’t attend? Register anyway, and we’ll send a copy of the slides and recording following the webinar.



[Webinar] Grand Slam Your SSRS Reports

June Webinar

Tune in next week Friday, June 28, 2013 at 1 P.M. for our June webinar as we give you another inside look at how OfficeWriter enhances SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), making your reports a home run. Senior Sales Engineer, Chad Evans, will walk you through using both single and multi-value parameters and formulas in SSRS. Using baseball data on players’ batting averages and salaries, this webinar is sure to impress. Don’t miss out! Seating is limited.


*Can’t attend? Register anyway, and we’ll send a copy of the slides and recording following the webinar.

Internet Week New York 2013 in Review

Joan Rivers

Digital Cities PanelA whirlwind week of panels, classroom discussions, and events is the only way to describe Internet Week NY. Bringing together masterminds behind the digital space, Internet Week NY covered how companies from startups to non-profits to corporations like MLB are harnessing the power of online personalities to market their brand and really integrate customers into their brand experience. Much like the internet itself (and was discussed by several panels), there was much “noise” or information to sift through. While valuable, it can be overwhelming. Thus, I wanted to provide a general guide with the most helpful info. While I’m tempted to talk about famous celebrities, Joan Rivers and Erica Oyama, I’ll save those and my favorite classes for later discussions. For now, I’ll attempt to boil down the overarching themes that wove the conference together and overlapped all of the different industries (from fashion to food to sports) taking over the digital arena. For all of the entrepreneurs, advertisers, and marketers out there, these are the key takeaways of which to make note.

Key Takeaways from Internet Week NY:

  • Humanize your brand – Social media and the internet in general allow for a more personalized customer experience. Not only that, they allow for customers to have an active involvement with your brand. People buy from people.
  • Encourage customer involvement with your brand – In other words, create experiences that involve people with your brand, such as holding contests, recognizing fans, and providing people the ability to vote on different elements of your brand. (Fun fact: People like their name and their voice. A representative from USA Mini Cooper and a panel speaker for a crowdfunding class both touched on this. USA Mini Cooper found out people liked to name their cars, so they had a contest where people could name the next Mini Cooper. Continue reading Internet Week New York 2013 in Review

Bringing Watertown together for a Boston Strong BBQ

Thank you to all who attended the Boston Strong BBQ last week. We had a wonderful time getting to know our Watertown neighbors, while eating delicious food and supporting a great cause. With your help, we were able to raise $350 for the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs. We were excited by the strong turnout – from students at the Harvard Business School to our next-door businesses at Air Graphics and Sasaki to those who simply saw the sign and flyers and decided to stop by. Thank you again for coming out to support a wonderful cause and share in the strength and pride of our city. We’re looking forward to more Watertown BBQs and community events over the summer.

For the full photo album visit our Facebook page and feel free to tag yourself. To read the Watertown Tab’s write-up of the event visit their site here: Watertown Companies Team Up to Comfort Community

Conference Recap: PubCon New Orleans 2013

PubCon

From the Pubcon New Orleans (2013) Trenches

PubCon (New Orleans, LA) – So many sessions, so much to consume and share. Where to begin? My week in New Orleans flew by as I soaked in both sessions and sightseeing. This was my first time attending Pubcon as well as my first time in NOLA. The first 48 hours were filled with numerous firsts: my first beignet, first walk down Bourbon St and the French Quarter, first tornado warning, and first full day in the SEO Masters Group Training. The conference sessions mainly focused on SEO, social media, and marketing. While I attended mostly the sessions in the SEO track, I did bounce around a little. The only way to try and recap the week effectively is for me to give you the top 5 areas from which I took the most away and what those in part covered.

PubConSEO

There were endless sessions on SEO, including tips, tricks, and tools. I heard multiple times a good way to rename “Search Engine Optimization” would be to start calling it “Search Experience Optimization.” Understanding the relationship between what people are talking about and how they’re searching is very important.

Top 5 takeaways:

  1. Create partnerships with other businesses and get your own company page on their sites. Then link back to a subpage of yours rather than a main page to boost rank on lower ranking pages.
  2. Build your own dashboards for compliance and performance so everyone is accountable for their part. Utilize Google webmaster tools and analytics to aid in this.
  3. Set up your own Google alerts to track your industry, keywords, and competitors.
  4. Use various tracking tools such as 3rd party sites or Firefox add ons like disabling JavaScript to literalize the page and see exactly how Continue reading Conference Recap: PubCon New Orleans 2013